Flash Drought

Last October, thanks to the most intense rainfall I've ever experienced in the Sierra foothills, we measured more than 10 inches of precipitation - more than enough to get the grass on our annual rangelands started. While we got just half of our "normal" November rainfall, December turned wet once again, with another 12 inches arriving mostly as rain. But after January 8, the spigot shut off - and it's been shut off ever since. With temperatures in the high 60s and no rain in the 14-day forecast, we find ourselves again (or maybe still?) in the midst of drought.

Some will know that we take grazing planning pretty seriously in our little sheep operation. We have a pretty good idea how many "sheep-days" an acre of our winter pasture will support, which allows us to estimate how many days of grazing we'll need to get through key parts of our production year. And one of the most critical parts of our year is quickly approaching - lambing season!

Obviously, lambing season is important to our bottom line. While we do sell some wool (hopefully) and do some summer targeted grazing, the bulk of our income comes from selling each year's crop of lambs. But lambing season is critical ecologically, too - we have chosen to lamb in late February through early April because that's when the forage on our annual rangelands is typically growing the most quickly. Lots of hungry ewes (who will consume as much as 50 percent more forage when they're nursing lambs) means we need lots of high quality forage for them to graze.

But with the dry and warm conditions, our oaks and brush species are showing signs of coming out of dormancy - which means they are drawing more water from the soil. If we don't get any rain by the first of March, we'll likely be through with the pastures we've planned to graze by the third week of March. In other words, in six weeks, we could be out of feed. As per our grazing plan, we were expecting to stay at this location through mid-April, when we'll move the sheep home for shearing and then on to irrigated pasture.

Drought is always part of our planning process, and so we're not totally unprepared for this possibility. Over the next 6-8 weeks, we'll begin implementing several strategies for extending our forage supply - strategies, that don't (for now) involve buying hay.

1. We'll grab any extra days of forage we can find. This means grazing close to roadsides in the community where our sheep are running. It means means extra labor to fence steep hillsides that have grass but that are difficult to access. It means we might be moving the ewes and lambs further (which also takes more time). This Saturday, we'll take stock of these additional grazing opportunities - I'm hoping we'll add another 10-14 days of forage to our plan.
2. We'll price some hay and think about where it would be most convenient to feed it - in addition to the purchase price of extra feed, we need to think about the labor and other expenses involved in hauling, storing, and feeding hay. This is usually a last resort for us, but since we've invested a full year's worth of expenses in getting the ewes to this point, we will consider buying feed.
3. We'll consider doing some paid grazing jobs in early April if they are convenient to our home place where we shear - if we can walk the sheep rather than loading them in the trailer for multiple trips, this might be an uption.
4. If we haven't had an inch of rain by April 1, and if there's no rain in the 14-day forecast at that point, we'll sell any ewe that hasn't yet lambed.
5. If all else fails, I'll try washing my truck.

I attended (virtually) a symposium on drought tools put on by the Society for Range Management yesterday. One of the rancher's involved said of his drought plan, "We follow it. It's written down, which makes me accountable to it." We try to do the same. We've tried to stock our operation conservatively (that is, we've tried to keep the number of sheep we think we can graze without much purchased feed on the land we have available to us). We've invested in skills and technology (stockmanship and electric fencing) that allow us to mostly take our sheep to the forage (instead of hauling hay to the sheep). We've timed our highest forage demand with the time of year that usually gives us the greatest forage supply. But sometimes the conditions are worse than our expectations - sometimes we need reactive strategies, too. I'm increasingly convinced that this may be one of those years.